Internal Docs Show Trump Media Investors Were Duped

They were fed completely bogus projections.

MeidasTouch has obtained the initial Deck Report that was provided to investors in 2022 to persuade them to put their money into Trump Media stock when the company went public. This report shows that the information provided made wild claims about revenue projections based on data that was not only flawed, it was fantasyland.

After the stock went public, the share prices soared based on a massively inflated valuation of the company based on projected earnings. Their accounting firm was subsequently charged by the SEC with "massive fraud." CEO Devin Nunes, who received a healthy base salary and stock equity in the startup to leave Congress to run the company, stated publicly that they had hundreds of thousands of small "retail shareholders" who put their faith, and their money, in Trump's new business venture. (Nunes recently dumped over $600K of his own shares, while CFO Philip Juhan recently sold $1.9 million of his shares.) There are also multiple pending lawsuits involving the company.

At one point, the stock reached a high of $79.38 a share. Since that time, it has steadily tanked, losing 75% of its value just in the last several months as smart investors cashed out and dumped the stock, leaving Trump fans holding the bag. The stock is currently trading at just over $14 a share.

Trump owns 59% of the shares in the company despite putting in none of his own money. Those shares were valued at over $6 Billion when the stock soared, but he was unable to sell his shares. His shares are now worth less than $1.5 Billion, and he has been legally able to start selling them and cash out since September 20 based on a formula that was set forth in the initial public offering. However, recent comments from Trump during a speech in California, in which he told the public he had no intention of selling, could now land him in legal trouble should he choose to now unload his shares.

How were investors duped? Through wildly inflated earnings projections based on data that was obviously absurd to any objective person who looked at it. 

The Deck Report stated that the company was projected to take in $114 million in revenue in 2023. It took in $4.1 million. It then projected the company's earnings to balloon up to $835 million in 2024. It currently has taken in only $836,000 through the 2Q of 2024. The company also lost $58 million in 2023 and lost over $343 million so far in 2024. So the company has almost no money coming in, declining revenues, and is losing a massive amount of money.

So, how did they arrive at these preposterous projections on revenue and earnings? They began by comparing their startup website favorably to Netflix, Disney, iHeart, Facebook and Twitter. They then showed how many combined followers Trump had on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, then assumed that those followers would become PAID SUBSCRIBERS to Truth Social, which would result in billions of dollars in revenue coming in. That absurd claim has proven not to be the case, as Truth Social has nowhere close to that many users and none of them pay anything since it remains a free app.

Based on those numbers, they projected to investors that Truth Social would have 81 million users by 2026 who would be willing to pay for a subscription, with estimates of advertising revenue based on those numbers using comparables with the other listed companies like Facebook and Netflix. Donald Trump, who is certainly followed by just about everyone using Truth Social, currently has just over 7 million followers on the site, and none of them are paying anything.

What was also amusing was that they claimed Truth Social would take a 'Big Tent Approach' to appeal to users across the ideological spectrum and cast a wide net for entertainers, artists and celebrities to become active on the platform. None of that happened. There are virtually no Democrats or celebrities of any kind on Truth Social. The vast majority of even Republican Members of the House, Senate and Governors are not even on Truth Social. The idea that Trump and Devin Nunes were going to attract paid subscribers to the platform who didn't love Trump was insane.

They then listed Trump's "entertainment successes" to try and show that he has a historically successful track record as an entrepreneur in the entertainment industry. But they cited The Apprentice franchise owned and run by NBC, and the Miss Universe franchise which Trump co-owned from 1996-2015, which was a successful enterprise founded and run by others for decades before Trump bought in.

Another interesting part of the report is that the SEC requires that the founder of a company disclose to potential investors a list of companies they were involved in that went bankrupt. Trump was forced to list several that he either ran himself or had licensing deals with that failed. These included:

Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza, Trump Castle, THCR, Trump Entertainment Resorts, Trump Shuttle, Trump University, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, GoTrump.com, and Trump Steaks.

It is clear Trump Media followed a familiar pattern of so many other Trump business enterprises over the decades: Wildly inflated claims and predictions of incredible future success, largely based on smoke and mirrors and salesmanship, then Trump cashing out while others lose their money.

Now he promises that he will run the country like his businesses.

Which is exactly what we are afraid of.